Online Black Campaigns — the New 'Divide et Impera'
December 30, 2016 | 2:18 pm
Jakarta. Black campaigns on social media seem to have reached a whole new level of divide et impera or "divide and conquer" strategy employed by the Dutch during the colonial occupation of Indonesia, a lawmaker said on Thursday (29/12).
"Distortion of information has led to divide-et-impera politics, which disunites Indonesians. If it does not stop, it will threaten the country's social integration, security and sovereignty," said Masinton Pasaribu of the Democratic Party of Struggle, or PDIP.
He added that social media, initially meant to facilitate human interaction and information sharing, have become antisocial, full of hate speech.
Black campaigns, unsurprisingly aimed at the government, are well-planned and disseminated in the internet, which is a perfect platform for spreading provocative content to reach 129 million Indonesian social media accounts.
"The campaigns seem to be orchestrated to cause distrust towards the government. They resemble the social media activism that preceded the conflicts in Egypt, Libya and Syria [after the Arab Spring of 2010]," Masinton said.
Online Manipulations by the Elites
If these campaigns have been engineered, who takes the time and effort to plan and execute them?
According to some observers, they are members of the elite — wealthy, educated and aware of the possible destructive consequences of such games — who advance personal political interests over civic values.
"[The black campaigns] are linked to the interests of certain elite groups, which have amplified particular issues and organized masses to influence public opinion," Saiful Mujani Research Center (SMRC) analyst Sirojuddin Abbas said.
According to Sirojuddin, the mass mobilization could not have been masterminded by ordinary persons, because it is meant to turn the people against the government. He said there are more powerful individuals behind it, who do not want to see the cabinet of President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo and Vice President Jusuf Kalla succeed.
"If we look into these issues, there seems to be an effort undertaken by the elites to discredit others, including the Jokowi-Kall administration and the police. The motives are clearly political, economic and ideological," he added.
Arie Sujito, a political analyst from Gadjah Mada University (UGM) also claims some members of the elite have lost their "hanky panky privileges" under the new administration, especially due to Jokowi-Kalla's anticorruption policies.
"Some groups are troubled, particularly if they had earlier benefited from the authoritarian rule. They now try to interfere in the government's performance," he said.
Those groups use identity politics as their weapon and do not hesitate to treat religion as a political commodity.
Intelligence expert Mardigu Prasantyo said many parties participate in this "cyber war" scheme, including information services and propagandist media.
He took Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama's blasphemy case as example, and considers it merely a part of a long-term propaganda.
"It has been planned not as a short-term hoax. This is a non-military war," he said.
False Information
Freedom of the press and the rise of digital media have made possible not only citizen journalism and online activism, but also manipulation of the news, sharing false information and producing content that pretends to be journalistic, but is aimed at dividing Indonesians.
According to communications expert from UGM, Gusti Ngurah Putra, citizen journalism gives space for unstoppable stream of news, including satire and hoax.
Semuel Abrijani Pangerapan of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, said the government will block websites containing hoax and hate speech.
"If their content causes public unrest, we will bring them down. If their content violates the law, we will take legal steps," Semuel said after "Post-Revision Dynamics of the ITE [Electronic Information and Transaction] Law " discussion in Jakarta on Wednesday.
The ministry will cooperate with other stakeholders, including the police.
"In the digital world, there are traces that cannot be removed. It is easy to find them [the perpetrators], but it takes time," he added.
The National Police said the recent surge in the number of hoaxes spread online and through the social media is not coincidental and involves the so-called "hit and run" methods.
The perpetrators open social media accounts, upload false information and quickly close down the accounts before setting up new ones, National Police criminal investigation unit (Bareskrim) chief Brig. Gen. Agung Setya said.
Agung, who oversees cybercrime, said profiling shows that suspects intend to disrupt the status quo. Police experts will evaluate the content. If it is illegal, a criminal investigation will be launched immediately. If its is defamatory, the police will wait for a complaint to be filed by the parties concerned.
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